Day 62: Behnam Bakhshandeh

December 1, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“ … what inspires me is other people’s accomplishments, other people who break through barriers; when people say it is impossible to get done, they get it done, right?  That inspires me.  Nothing will limit us as a human being to our greatness … nothing.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much Behnam, for agreeing to do this interview with us today, and before we jump into those questions, can you please take a couple of minutes to introduce yourself?

Behnam Bakhshandeh: Sure.  Well thank you for the invitation, Toni.  I was really excited to participate in this great project.  I’m already inspired by your project anyway!

Toni: Well, thank you!

Behnam: My name is Behnam Bakhshandeh.  Obviously from my accent and my name, you know I’m not from Nashville, Tennessee or from New York.  I was born and raised in Iran; came to this great country 25 years ago.  I am a proud American.  I am the Executive Director and Senior Program Designer for Primeco Education, an educational coaching and training firm in San Diego, California, and also I’m author of a book called Conspiracy For Greatness … Mastery of Love Within, which is newly released, and a speaker and trainer.

Toni: My goodness, there’s a lot going on there! Based on the work that you do — the company that you run, the books that you’ve written — and you think about the word inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?

Behnam: Well, in general cases, I inspire people around me.  Mostly people work with me because they get inspired by what I accomplished, because, you know, just imagine.  I came to this country 25 years ago, I had $98 in my pocket – actually I had $100 – the first $2 I bought myself a can of beer at the airport.  So I had $98, and I was not speaking English.  When we were in school or college, they teach you English like “Okay, open the door; close the window; where is the bus station?”  That was really not helping in life, right, when you come into a whole new country.

So, I started actually working from odd jobs.  I’m a very educated man formally and informed on the world education, world information, and I start as a laborer.  I worked in the dry cleaners; I worked at construction sites; I worked as a pipe fitter.  And then I started my own construction company, and then I sold it.  And I started my career as a speaker, and a writer, and a designer 16 years ago.

This inspires people — my story of success — because it’s just nothing but a miracle that me coming to this country and now learning the English the way that would make a living for me.  I speak for English – if that is not inspiring, I don’t know what is inspiring.  We don’t do advertisements for our company; it is word-of-mouth.  People get inspired from my story and not giving up, not surrendering.  I love this country.  It is the land of opportunity; no kidding, land of opportunity.

So who do I inspire?  Mostly, people who are stuck in life.  People who even accomplish a lot and they think they haven’t done enough.  People who are stuck at a certain plateau in life and they don’t think they can go further.  People who have some difficulty communicating and say what they need or what they want.  Teams and organizations who are stuck in the level of productivity, that they think it is not possible to go more than that.  When I’m sharing my story with them, they get inspired and then they start working and they see what is available for them.

Toni: And that would be the way that, after you provide them with your own success stories and the challenges that you’ve been through, is that then how you translate that for them into exploring their potential, or are there other ways that you help people to explore their potential?

Behnam: Exactly.  This is the opening.   My story of success will bring them to the door.  When they come through the door, then we have a systematic approach, nonlinear, but systematic approach to what it takes to be happy, what it takes to be productive, what it takes to be communicative.  We are not working on the doing part of people.  I don’t teach them what to do – I don’t know what they do.

If tomorrow your company or you personally hire us to work with you on your productivity or level of communication, literally we don’t dig into what you do.  Why?  Because the person who’s doing it is always you, even if you change your job.  So you are the master of this life.  You are the generator, the engine, what would move this life.

So if, for example … have you ever noticed somebody, your family or friends or coworkers, they always notice who they are being all the time as they being upset or they are being resentful.  Regardless of what month of the year or what’s going on or you change the job, you can still see a resentful person.

Toni: Right.

Behnam: On the other side, sometimes you see a happy person, nothing getting to them; they’re always happy.  So you put that person and what they do and who they are being, make a difference in what they do.

Toni: That’s fantastic!

Behnam: Thank you.  To wrap up the question you asked me, who do I inspire, I would say everybody.  I have clients from age of 18 all the way to late years of 80 or even 85 years old I have worked with, and my passion is to make a difference with young adults.  To me as a human being, as an American, as a man, it is not acceptable the level of nonsense that our youth is dealing with: drugs, alcohol, HIV, the high school dropouts, violence, gang membership, high school dropouts – I think I mentioned that — teen pregnancy.

I am inspired by these young adults’ life potential; and one of the things that we do with our affiliate company, a nonprofit organization called Aspire, is we provide this technology and this coaching and this planning to young adults.  Literally, these kids inspire us.  It’s amazing to see somebody who’s been a teen pregnant mother and then been in a gang coming out and taking life from neck (editor’s note: i.e. by the throat) and say “I will do some changes; I will be productive in society.”  That inspires me.  That makes me want to do more.

Toni: What I’m hearing from you in the very beginning of the interview is that’s what you’ve done.  So, that’s what you’ve done; so you’re creating a platform for others to do it, and that feeds what you’ve already been through and what you’ve done.

Behnam: Yes, but we have another 6 billion to go!

Toni: Yeah, exactly!  Well, let’s talk about how you seek inspiration.  All of this great work that you’re doing in inspiring others by your story and the talents and the skills and exploring their potential – what about you?  What do you do you need for inspiration?  What inspires you?

Behnam: Well, it seems like I hear this question from two different angles.  What do I need to be inspired and what or who inspires me?  What do I need as a person to be inspired is love.  Love comes to me and I’m so … jeez, I forgot the word of English …

Toni: Grateful!

Behnam: Grateful!  I am so grateful that so much love comes to me from family, from clients, and that makes me motivated, that makes me go forward.  Love for life – that’s big for me.   I’m inspired by life itself.  When I see things happening in the world, when I read history and search in history, people, historians, philosophers, public figures inspired me.

Our President, John F. Kennedy, inspires me. When he said we are going to the moon not because it’s easy, because it’s hard, I said “I like to play that game!”  I talk about these things in my book, Conspiracy For Greatness. Mahatma Gandhi inspires me.  He told British, “You’re going to leave my country without violence.”  It took them 30 years, but they left without violence from Indians.

Dr. Luther King inspires me because he took that concept from Mahatma Gandhi and say “I will have equality in society without violence”, and here we are, we have our first African-American President.  That inspires me!  It inspires me when I see we are standing as a nation against all these things that are happening to us, and we are standing for greatness of other people; that inspires me.

So, to wrap it up, what inspires me is other people’s accomplishments, other people who break through barriers; when people say it is impossible to get done, they get it done, right?  That inspires me.  Nothing will limit us as a human being to our greatness … nothing.

What inspires me is when somebody told a kid “You cannot do this” and they go and fight back and they go to school and they go to college and they come up graduated.  That make me cry – awesome, good for you!  That’s why I call it Conspiracy For Greatness because what they do as a human being unconsciously is they are pulling each other down.

This kid wants to go to college and people say “Who going to give you a scholarship?  You think it’s easy?  Forget it!  Go work in McDonald’s!”  And this kid doesn’t listen and go and become a college graduate.  What this person can do for oneself is to create a conspiracy for her greatness or his greatness, putting people around them to push them forward; that inspires me.

Toni: It’s just awesome … your enthusiasm and passion is dripping through this interview!

Behnam: I love life!  Life is such a gift!

Toni: Well, let me ask you  – the final question here is what do you do to continuously explore your own potential so that you can translate that, transfer that into the inspiring moments for others?  So what do you do to explore your own potential?

Behnam: Very good question, Toni.   As you notice by now, I’m a human being. I’m not a Martian.  I go to my world of resignation.  I wake up in the morning and deal with no possibility with upset, with “I can’t do.”  That is automatic.  I call it automatic way of being; you can’t help it.  It’s part of being human.

I created a life vision for myself worth of living.  That is what I do actually in our coaching system and training system, and actually is the outcome of the book I wrote, Conspiracy for Greatness, to create life vision for people.

Let me make a very simple example about what do I mean by that – if we want to use electronic device, let’s say a computer, hair dryer, printer, whatever, right?  Unless we put that three-prong plug to the wall to source energy, electricity, we have no power, we have no use for that device isn’t it?

Toni: That’s right.

Behnam: But what we can say is, literally, electricity powered and sourced that device to be used.  Now, imagine that device is you and I, our life.  We have our cord in our hand.  Where we plug ourselves to get sourced by?  People sourced by love, by religion, by inspiration, right?

Toni: Right.

Behnam: By family, by money, by success, by recognition.   However, if you notice we always plug that cord to our past experiences like we want to do better, we want to do more, we want to do different.  “Oh, this time I’m going to get married, but I’m going to get married better than the last time I did.  This time I’m going to lose 10 pounds because I have 20 pounds extra I ate in holidays.  This time I’ll get a better job because that last job was not good enough.”

You notice that?  It’s all good but still, you’re connecting yourself to your past.  You try to overcome your past.  I always say, let’s create a life vision that you source from future.  Let’s unplug from this wall and plug to the other wall in front of you called the future, the vision.

This is my life vision; I’m going to read it to you.  My life vision is “Life fulfilled, passion, love, and laughter expressed, inspired by people’s success, having fun, and creating abundance.”

So when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see on my desk is this beautiful Italian stone frame I put in front of me; that is who I am.  That is where I go.  I didn’t talk about Behnam’s life.  Did you get inspired when you listened to that vision?

Toni: Yes.

Behnam: It’s not about me; it’s about you.  I didn’t talk about Behnam’s life.  I didn’t talk about, “I’m going to make money.”  I said that I would be inspired by your success, I will have fun, and I will create abundance.  And abundance, financial abundance, is one aspect of abundance.  Love around me, my children, my family, my staff, my clients, that’s abundance.  Living healthy, peace of life is abundance.

So we wake up in the morning, we don’t think how much money we’re going to make; we wake up in the morning and we think how many people are we going to inspire today?  How many people are we going to touch today?  Now, obviously when that turns to a business/monetary success, we are grateful and we are having fun and we created abundance.  It’s not that hard!

Toni: I have to tell you, unfortunately, we are almost at the end of the interview here and you have been a lot of fun, but with a very, very strong, impactful message in this interview; and this has been a gift that you have shared with me today that I’m going to be able to share with others.  And so for that and allowing this time spent with you, I thank you so very much.

Behnam: Oh, you’re welcome, Toni.  Thank you for the opportunity.  I love your project – what an awesome project!  Actually, I will talk to people I know to make sure you can interview more people so you can touch more people.  I am very grateful for your time and this opportunity.

Toni: Thank you so much, take care.

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For more information about Behnam Bakhshandeh:  www.PrimecoEducation.com

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